408 Paragraphs from u PortJ'oliu. [Oct. 



The French, in their day of revolutionary renown, had a favourite 

 boast that all the roads of the world centered in Paris, a boast which 

 expressively hinted that the march of a French army was easy to any 

 capital of the globe. But England has now taken the lead in the loco- 

 motive propensity, and her travellers, whether by steam, by carriage- 

 wheels, or by balloons, will soon leave no spot untraversed where man 

 can live and be looked at. How would it have astonished our forefathers 

 to hear that St. Petersburg could be reached from London, slept in, and 

 returned from, within the week. Of course, this lays all Europe, where 

 a steam-boat can approach, directly at the mercy of the cockney who 

 can spare from twenty- four hours to half a dozen days. A simple glance 

 at the map shews the distances of all the ports. 



The distance from Amsterdam to London is 190 miles W. 



The distance from Copenhagen to London is 610 miles N.W. 



The distance from Stockholm to London is 750 miles S.W. 



The distance from St. Petersburg to London is 1140 miles S.W. 



The distance from Constantinople to London is 1660 miles N.W. 



The distance from Lisbon to London is 850 miles N.N.E. 



The distance from Dublin to London is 338 miles S.E. 



The distance from Edinburgh to London is 395 miles S. 



The distances between London and the capitals not accessible by sea 

 are more formidable from the mere circumstance of their being out of 

 the way of the steam-boat ; but time may introduce the railway, at least 

 upon the principal highroads of Europe, and we shall disregard miles 

 equally by land or sea. The distances of the remaining capitals are : 

 London from Paris is 225 miles N.N.W. 

 London from Berlin is 540 miles W. 

 London from Vienna is 820 miles N.W. 

 London from IMadrid is 860 miles N.N.E. 

 London from Rome is 950 miles N.N.E. 



No one will charge either the ancient Romans or the modern English 

 with inferiority in mental distinction, and yet almost the whole of the 

 Roman sources of eminence in the arts of civilization were foreign. Their 

 music, painting, and sculpture were Greek ; their laws Greek ; their 

 architecture Greek. In war their borrowing was equally conspicuous. 

 Their tactics, their weapons, their armour, their standards, their military 

 rewards, their art of fortification, their military machines, were all bor- 

 rowed from strangers. 



England has been just as great a borrower, if we were to judge merely 

 from her language. Our principal terms of sculpture and of paint- 

 ing are Italian ; our military terms are Fi-ench ; our navigation hafj 

 largely borrowed its language from the Dutch and Flemings ; our sys- 

 tems of accounts, loans, and banking, are Italian; our coats are made by 

 a tailleur ; our wives' gowns by a milliner (a IVIilanese) or a mantua- 

 maker ; our hunting vocabulary, our horsemanship, hawking, and field- 

 sports in general have borrowed largely from the French ; our cookery 

 is daily borrowing so much from the French, that it will require a Pari- 

 sian education to sit at an English table. The chief uses of the old 

 English are to be found in the names of things connected with tillage. 

 The names of science, and its instruments and operations, are principally 

 modelled on the Greek. The botanical names of flowers are generally 

 Latin. And yet England has contrived, like Rome, to do prodigiously 



